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Antiwar Veteran Eager for Battle

John Kerry of Massachusetts is a three-term United States senator with a résumé steeped in foreign affairs. He is a decorated Vietnam War veteran who later became an antiwar leader. He is an articulate, telegenic and wealthy candidate known to savor a fight on the political field.

But Mr. Kerry, who has put in motion the most extensive 2004 presidential campaign of any Democrat to date, also has a decidedly liberal voting record in the Senate that could be a burden in a general election against President Bush. He has a reputation, fairly or not (Mr. Kerry says not), for being stiff and aloof. He lends himself to caricature as the haughty Massachusetts liberal whom the Republican Party and the Bush family have made a sport of tormenting over the past 14 years.

For many Democrats anxious about the two years ahead, the critical question is which of these elements of Mr. Kerry's biography will come to define him in the 13 months leading to the Iowa caucus vote.

Yet with many Democrats despairing over their potential field of presidential challengers, the unambiguous declaration by Mr. Kerry last week that he will run for president in 2004 has heartened some party leaders. They like the unusual prospect of a Democrat who can directly engage a Republican on national security and foreign policy, in an electoral atmosphere charged by the threat of war abroad and terror at home.

''I come to this campaign with a set of experiences that are directly relevant to the times that we are in,'' Mr. Kerry said, sitting in a wingback chair in his Senate office here the other evening, as Washington began to clear out in anticipation of a light snow storm. ''And I think the issues that I've chosen to lead on, to fight on, are relevant to these days.''

''The president nationalized this race on security, but in a vacuum,'' Mr. Kerry said, discussing his party's losses in November. ''That can't happen as we go into '04. You've got a mano a mano -- you've got a head-to-head presidential race, and you're going to have opposing point of views. This race is about the country and the anxiety and the aspirations of the American people.''

The last time foreign policy loomed as such a central issue in an American presidential campaign was 22 years ago, when Ronald Reagan unseated Jimmy Carter in the midst of the Iran hostage crisis. More than any of his prospective rivals so far, Mr. Kerry has built his early campaign on the foundation of his foreign policy views and credentials, as well as on the domestic issues typically associated with Democrats.

Mr. Kerry, who turns 59 on Wednesday, is surely the only senator whose office displays a photograph of him posing with John Lennon at an antiwar demonstration at the New York Public Library and another of him standing in military fatigues in the Mekong Delta. He served 10 months in Vietnam where he was wounded three times, receiving three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. In the Senate, he has served 18 years on the Foreign Relations Committee and 6 years on the Intelligence Committee.

''John Kerry in some respects is George Bush's worst nightmare,'' said Kathleen Sullivan, the New Hampshire Democratic chairwoman, who has not endorsed anyone in the race. ''John Kerry is not going to let any Republican get away trying to marginalize his credentials as a patriot. It's going to be very difficult for some folks in Washington who did what they could to avoid serving in Vietnam.''

He has a lot of money, too. Beyond an unused $3.1 million in his Senate campaign account, which his aides say could be used for a presidential campaign, he is married to Teresa Heinz, the wealthy widow of Senator John Heinz, an heir to the Heinz food fortune. Although Mr. Kerry said he intended to abide by the limits of the nation's campaign finance law, he left himself an opening to tap his wife's fortune if ''something dramatic takes place in some sort of underhanded, extraordinary way in which they would attack us personally.''

Still, for all those evident advantages, some Democrats expressed concern that Mr. Kerry would present a tempting target to this White House, inviting the kind of ideological and regional derision that has proved so effective against other Massachusetts Democrats who wanted to be president.

Republicans are poised to portray Mr. Kerry as more of a Dukakis than a Kennedy -- even though Mr. Kerry seems to have gone to some lengths to evoke the Kennedy legacy with his elaborate shock of styled hair and frequent references to John F. Kennedy. Mr. Kerry served as lieutenant governor to Michael S. Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts who lost to the first President George Bush in a brutal campaign in 1988.

''He's vulnerable on the criticism that he's a Massachusetts liberal,'' said Dick Harpootlian, the South Carolina Democratic chairman. ''I think that this White House has been very adept at labeling people, and that's a concern. Is it something that he can overcome? Sure.''

Mr. Dukakis, who today is a professor of political science at Northeastern University, said in an interview that there were lessons in how Mr. Bush's father had systematically unraveled him.

''We all learned in '88 -- these guys will attack you,'' Mr. Dukakis said. ''They'll attack you early and often, and there's no sense in being under any illusions. If we learned anything from '88 it is that you've got to be ready for it. It's going to be coming.''

Mr. Kerry said he was eager for battle in a way that other Democrats had not been. ''You've got to fight back,'' he said. ''If you're not willing to defend yourself, the American people are not going to trust that you're going to defend the nation.''

In laying the groundwork for his candidacy, Mr. Kerry has moved aggressively to resist efforts by his opponents to tie him down ideologically. For example, he was quick in an interview to note that he is a former prosecutor and had voted for free trade legislation, restrictions on welfare benefits and eligibility, and the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction bill. He shook his head vigorously in response to the suggestion from some Democrats that the correct response to his party's defeat this fall was to return to the left.

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He has at times appeared to be trying to muddy the water on some complicated issues. For example, more than a few Democrats said, after he appeared on the NBC program ''Meet the Press,'' that they had difficulty determining precisely what his views were on White House efforts to oust Saddam Hussein.

And in the interview Mr. Kerry parried efforts to characterize him ideologically. ''This is not a debate about left and right,'' he said. ''This is a debate about basic issues, and what common sense tells us we need to do in this country. Define me by the things I fight for and do. Labels are silly in modern American politics.''

Still, by any measure, Mr. Kerry is on the left side of the ideological spectrum in Congress. He favors gun control, abortion rights and a higher minimum wage. He opposed the first resolution authorizing President Bush's father to move against Saddam Hussein, citing public ambivalence about going to war. (He voted for the Iraq resolution this time.)

He denounced President Bush's tax cuts as ''unfair, unaffordable and unquestionably ineffective in growing our economy,'' saying that tax cuts for the wealthy should be replaced with tax cuts for the middle class and an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for working poor families.

Mr. Kerry strongly opposes the death penalty and insists this position would not hurt him in a general election campaign. ''It is a phony, bogus, red herring issue that has no place in a presidential race,'' he said, ''because there is nothing the president of the United States is going to do with respect to this issue.''

But the past 50 years of presidential campaigns would appear to suggest otherwise. The last president of either party who opposed the death penalty was Lyndon B. Johnson. One of the ways Mr. Bush's father won election was by highlighting Mr. Dukakis's stance against executions.

And many Democrats contend that the issue could have a particular resonance in this race, because of terrorism. Mr. Kerry said he favored the death penalty for terrorists -- but voted in 1989 against such legislation for terrorists who kill Americans abroad. That position seems likely to find its way back onto the public stage in the campaign ahead.

If there is one other note of worry -- or perhaps curiosity -- being sounded by Democrats about a Kerry candidacy, it revolves around the style of both the candidate and his wife. If Mr. Kerry is cool and reserved, Ms. Heinz is known in Washington for her candid and outspoken ways -- though some Democrats suggest her manner, which has included bickering with her husband in front of a Washington Post reporter, might better be described as impolitic.

''She has her opinions and I'm proud of that,'' Mr. Kerry said. ''I think when people get to know her -- I think that has to be put to bed once and for all. I look forward to the somebody writing about her for the person she really is: she is a passionate, deeply involved caring person.''

As for Mr. Kerry?

''Maybe it comes from having a craggy face and being six-foot-four and a big shock of hair or something,'' he said. 'But I laugh at myself all the time around here. Ask the people who know me best and I think you'll find I'm a kind of guy who is capable of hugging somebody who lost somebody and crying with them, and laughing outrageously and going out and having a good time.''

PROFILE

John Forbes Kerry

BORN: Dec. 11, 1943, Denver.

FAMILY: Married to Teresa Heinz, chairman, Howard Heinz Endowment. Two daughters from a previous marriage.

FAVORITE PRESIDENT: Abraham Lincoln. ''Abraham Lincoln saved the Union. We wouldn't be the United States had he not summoned the greatest courage imaginable during the toughest period in our history.''

LEGISLATIVE HIGHLIGHTS: Played a significant role leading to the lifting of the United States trade embargo on Vietnam in 1994; joined Senator John McCain in an investigation that concluded there was no compelling evidence of prisoners of war still alive in Vietnam; among the leaders in the legislative battle to block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; helped write airport security legislation that put the federal government in charge of hiring and managing airport security workers; was involved in the Congressional investigation that helped expose fraud at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was closed in 1991 after being linked to secret weapons deals and terrorist financing; sponsored a federal youth bill program that allowed young adults to obtain high school diplomas while learning constructions skills building housing for the homeless.

This is the first in a weekly series of articles about the prospective candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

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A version of this article appears in print on December 9, 2002, on Page A00024 of the National edition with the headline: Antiwar Veteran Eager for Battle. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe